'Til death do us part (with our belongings)

The years take their toll on the human condition - OK, we are getting old then - as basically its like the process that used to be on the children’s BBC television programme years ago called Crackerjack (look it up online if unsure), where the final game was general knowledge questions and if you got one wrong you got a cabbage (now there’s a novelty...), collect three cabbages and you were eliminated then left with a Crackerjack pencil as a consolation prize.

So, in basic terms, our demise or departure from this world is ‘someone above’ possibly giving us the equivalent of a ‘Crackerjack’ pencil, as we have had our mythical three cabbages as our farewell from the game but the reason I use these terms is because in recent years I have attended so many funerals you feel it's become a regular event, as I went for years attending hardly any.

Not being mawkish, but I have just heard of someone I knew who has collected his Crackerjack pencil, so the Christmas card list is now getting shorter sadly.

Funerals can be both depressing and uplifting in that you learn things about a person that you were not aware of while they were beavering away alongside us but there is another, much darker, side as well if the following is anything to go by.

One I attended was amazing for all the wrong reasons, as the weather was quite harsh at the time. I must admit I do loathe winter funeral services although I know its not the dearly- departed fault, as these things happen, Crackerjack pencil or not.

The service was enlightening as the eulogy read out by the minster brought out another side of the person that many of us knew nothing about, as he was not one to have been ‘in the limelight’ so to speak.

The recorded music was something else, as we heard from Frank Sinatra belting out ‘That’s Life’ to many raised eyebrows, but it seems cousin Cliff had not got the hang of the church CD player, as he wanted ‘My Way’ but he couldn’t find it on the compilation album.

Afterwards, we shuffled out the church to the cemetery and as we stood by his final resting place in silence (or so I thought), there was a faint clicking noise as his sisters (he never married) with their backs turned to us were working out the suspected contents of his will on their calculators!

To say I was amazed - or rather appalled - would be an understatement, as the poor man - or not if their combined up-to-the-minute calculations were anything to go by - had not even been lowered below ground level at that point, so quite insensitive but even in death greed was still an active element, so perhaps no change there, loose or otherwise.

Afterwards, some of us were invited back to his home for the wake and I thought it couldn’t be anything worse than the callous display I had witnessed at the graveside.

We all parked in an orderly fashion near to his house.

I was locking the car when somebody seemingly from nowhere tugged my sleeve and asked: ‘Did he go alright?’ to which I thought she seemed to think he’s perhaps caught a train or whatever judging by the tone but before I could reply she added: ‘I don’t care what anybody says - he left me his coal bunker you know - I looked after and fed his cat when he went to work or on holiday - so I know what I have been promised’.

How could you reply to that as I walked away towards the house, hearing her dulcet tones: ‘It’s an heavy ‘un and I will need a hand shifting it to mine later, if you’ve got five minutes to spare..’

So, from financial assets or rather their assumed worth, to coal bunkers in one swift afternoon.

I rang the doorbell with the usual greeting, once inside the hallway, of: ‘So glad you could come back - its what he would have wanted..’ being the standard greeting as I was ushered through to the lounge area to meet other mourners plus, of course, the ‘Calculator Sisters’ now with their husbands presiding over the event like some bizarre event like the old television quiz show ‘The Price is Right’.

One of the husbands was nipping about with a tape measure plus notebook and jotting assorted measurements down, so no risk of the curtains or the furniture being reduced to a pile of rubble through non-use or neglect as they would/might be soon leaving those four walls, assuming the walls would be left that is.

They certainly made predatory vultures seem like mere budgies in many respects.

Next came a deranged person from the kitchen, female in appearance: could this be the ‘missing link’ we had heard about for millions of years? Clad entirely in black like a medieval executioner’s assistant with a tea towel over her shoulder.

She removed the ciggie from the corner of her mouth to explain: ‘If anybody else wants any of the bloater paste and cucumber sarnies, we’ve run out of 'em but there is some cheese and tomato left I can do yer’

Several deluded souls were doing their mournful approach to the Calculator Sisters but judging by their quicko departure afterwards, brother had not ‘left them anything’ or ‘mentioned anything before he went’ seemed to be the overall message of the day. I thought perhaps a flashing neon sign over the door with ‘We’ve got it all sussed, so don’t ask’ might have been appropriate at this sad time - or at least sad for the most of us there discounting those who did get a bloater paste and cucumber sarnie on the first relay, who came to mourn a deeply-missed friend.

Time was moving on by now and people were making their final words known to the Calculator Sisters plus in the background their hubbies still ‘taking stock’ as they got their coats on - or those not looked upon as being ‘stock’ - to leave with most uttering the now dog-eared sentence: ‘If you need anything, you know where we are..’ but this sentence is usually incomplete as they fail, in a lot of cases, to add the punch line of: ‘…and we are staying there as well’.

By now, little tickets were being put on the assorted items such as vases, ornaments, paintings, table lamps etc, but on a quick glance it was which sister was having what, as to be honest, it looked like some surreal tombola stall.

As I made my farewells to one and all before departing and hopefully before the men in white coats arrived, Mrs Baldrick - the Black-Clad Catering One - stuck her head round the door to say she had now: ‘Run out of toothpicks to put the chipolata bangers on unless anyone has some narrow, unused matchsticks they could spare to use’.

I got to the car as the Bunker Lady appeared from nowhere again, then asked what was happening to ‘her bunker’ but I didn’t want to spoil things by saying it might be got a ticket on it by now although perhaps not quite ‘what he would have wanted’ maybe but then again as Mr Sinatra might have sung ‘That’s Life’.